Best way to deploy many files?

[nmsams]

I have around 30 Excel spreadsheets that I need to deploy with my setup for 2012. Then I will add 30 more when we get to 2013 and so on. What is the best way to handle these?

1. Add all files individually each year to my install?
2. Add them to a zip file and add the zip file to my install once and then just modify the files in the zip each year? I'm assuming installshield would be able to unzip during the install?
3. Or any other suggestions, I'm open to any ideas...

I'm using IS 2011 and have a pure MSI install. All the files are going to the same target location.

thanks for your input!

[Christopher_Pai]

Option 1. 30 files per year is hardly many files. ( I've worked on installers with 15k-200k files.)

[Sairen]

I'm curious about some best practices too - especially from someone who has worked on very large projects.

I'm looking at both a lot of files AND these files being highly dynamic. Let's say we're looking at several hundred files over maybe 50 directories and they're changing weekly. Files and folders are being added and removed.

Dynamic linking makes me wake up in cold sweats since it could easily break the minor update process which we use internally for our day to day builds.

Strict static linking, however, is going to leave me spending all my time updating this silly thing - which I can't do as it's just one of 30 installer projects I have to maintain (aside from doing new development).

I've considered zipping the files and unzipping them on the target machine - then the installer only has to know the name and target location of the zip. But it seems like this additional "moving part" could be unreliable...

Suggestions?

Thanks!

[nmsams]

Oh good...you understand where I'm coming from!

To put into context, I'm trying to deploy the new tax tables for every state so that our clients can just click a button and read the data in from the excel files every year instead of hand keying them in. So I might have a file called AZTax2012.xls, NMTax2012.xls and so on...then a year later I'm adding AZTax2013.xls. I tried talking my boss into calling it AZTax with no year so we don't have to add files every year but he wants to have both years exist simoltaneously.

If i'm constantly adding/removing from Installshield, that's a lot of maintenance and it won't allow for a minor updgrade when removing the prior files eventually.

Just wanted an opinion from users who are smarter than me as to what you would do in a "best practices" sense to tackle this problem.

I don't want to create unneeded extra work for myself.

[nmsams]

I think I've answered my own question...

I forgot about Dynamic File Links. I'm going to just dynamically add the folder to the install that contains all my excel spreadsheets and then at install time it will just scoop up whatever is in that folder. So I can add/remove files in that folder as needed and never have to touch Installshield again (for this issue anyway).

I found in another post that Installshield does not do any unzipping for you, you would have to implement that on your own....so the dynamic linking seems to be the best solution for my project.

[Christopher_Pai]

I can't say I recommend dynamic file linking. You are just trading one problem for a bigger problem. Nothing good ever comes of it in my experience.

[nmsams]

I have the Learning MSI Projects using Installshield 2011 book and it walks you through it.

From what I see, you still have to have a key file, so you have to add that file as static then exclude it from the dynamic link.

And then it says you should use the Patch Optimization setting in the Release Wizard when building an upgrade project.

I'm hoping if I do those 2 things, then I won't have any issues.

[manomatt]

dynamic file linking could be used in this scenario, but there might be trade offs. You cannot change the files properties like readonly through installer and when it comes to minor upgrade or patch you have to be careful if you have change in the linked files and the keyfile which is static is having no change

[nmsams]

If I have the static file set to "Always Overwrite" then will I be okay if my dynamic files change but the static does not change?

[manomatt]

If the user had manually edited some of the content of the static file then if u try to always over write it that it will run you into trouble right? so for choosing the static file you might want to take a judicious call